Why not aim for the best education in the world.
Pay more tax for more teachers and have smaller classes than any other country.
Give less motivated pupils a different schooling. Make them read and know their maths. Teach them in social skills.
Give every child a chance in life!
The school has failed if they can't provide the employers with decent workers or academics.

Peter, Southampton,

You dont need to go to school to get an education, I didnt go to school and i have been working in a noodle sandwich factory for the past eight years, one day i will become manager.

Steven Wood, london,

Well Alice, what do you need and what do you want?

You should really be ashamed about your narrow minded jealousies.

Unless you've had nothing you cannot imagine how much a little help can mean. Levelling the field between children who have done nothing to earn their circumstances nor their inherent talents is right.

In a world of scarce resources, to further advantage those sitting pretty in life at the expense of those born into the sharp end of the world is pretty perverse.

Kieran McCaldin, London, London

I don't think it is a bad idea. But it must be accompanied with a greater separation of the academic and t'practical. This line been progressively blurred and to what end? Tinkering apparently to satisfy a wrong-headed yearning for equality and middle-class desire not to look superior. Not all kids are the same. Kids who are good with their hands or with more practical skills like spatial awareness end up as more knowledgeable office drones if they want to later in life. Instead we are creating a world of over-educated managers removed from practical reality, an underpaid and under-appreciated shopfloor and schools full of the misdirected and repressed.

mount, dorset, gb

alice miles is an embarrassment to all classes.This Government has failed to provide everybody,after 10 years of gimmicky statements to deliver what most other countries have and that is a sensible,disiplined system of running schools.For Miss Miles to go on about the middle classes and how they have so much money that they buy houses in good areas and pay incredible fees to independant schools is just rot.The percentage of people able to afford this is tiny,and if they do they sacrifice a huge amount of their life style to make the best investment you can make towards a good education for their children.Its a fact that the less privileged children will always benefit from the pressure the enlightened classes put on the education authorities to improve.This ridiculous Govermnments efforts in social engineering will probably result in some sort of strong action at the ballot box.,Miss Miles's article is incredibly patronising to any class you care to mention

C.F.Frank, London,

"but I fail to see how forcing a teenager who will otherwise end up long-term unemployed and unemployable to gain decent skills is such an infringement of his rights." - the problem with this Alice is the outcome - those who should benefit from this won't. Why? Because they will resent being forced to stay on in an institution they despise. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink - all that will happen is that the resentful will disrupt education for those who want to learn.

Richard Marriott, Worcester, England

Its a nice article Alice, but why be so embarrassed at fighting your own corner. If the middle classes don't fight for themselves they can be sure no one else will.

Alan Benn, Melksham, Wilstshire

Do not be ashamed of doing the best you can for your family. It is your duty as a parent. You cannot expect the government to do anything for you. They know that 50% of children not reading properly by the age of 11 is mostly due to them. The fact the system is a shambles is not because of a lack of alternatives. They know that comprehensivisation created “bog-standard comprehensives.” They hear alternative ideas too numerous to mention. They can see better systems in Sweden, Korea, Holland, US, Denmark, Israel, etc. etc. They know all about the UK Independent system, that the well off spend fortunes to use it and avoid their system and government ministers do it too. They know it manages with no DofE, LEAs, government initiatives, no advice from the government inspectorate and no “investment” from them and that it is the best in the world according to the OECD. BUT THEY IGNORE EVERYTHING. They will never change. You carry on doing the best for your kids. No-one else will.

R Mason, London, UK

You want a good education for your children and you're grown up enough to want to put yourself and your family first. Welcome to adult life. You can now safely take the Che Geuvara poster down off your bedroom wall. Stop being so apologetic about it. It's cringe-worthy.

Redcliffe, London,

It's the 'everyone must be forced to do what by our standards is good for them' that makes me really disgusted with this government and those that support them. Never mind freedom of choice, never mind respecting people or the differences in their lives, the middle class self righteous apologists know best and it's to make these poor stupid idiots co operate with do gooding by force. It will not be long before those perceived as middle class will be under social pressure to actively support the disadvantaging of themselves and their kids in this do good mission - which is thoroughly unappreciated by the recipients. I see no difference between this and the Lady Bountiful act of eighty years ago. Equally patronising and equally meaningless. It's this kind of attitude exactly that exported thousands of kids to Australia and Canada last century 'for their own good' and build and stocked workhouses.

Helen, Northants,

The minimum age for leaving school should be 15 - here's why.
Many teenagers just cannot wait to get out into the labour market and start earning. These youngsters are all too familiar to teachers - they're the ones in the back row, often disrupting classes and generally being a pain. At school they are merely putting in time. Eventually they do leave and - having no qualifications - are either unemployable or get dead-end jobs.
They marry or cohabit and have children : all too late they come to realise that they should have made the most of their time at school. But it is now too late - they must feed their families, pay mortgages, rent etc and cannot afford to go back into full-time education. Impasse.
New Policy suggestion : allow anyone to leave school from the age of 15 BUT with the ability to take up full-time education up to age 30. Government would pay minimum (or negotiated) wage for, say, 4 years. Possibly some loan scheme involvement. Objections ?

David Thomas, Burnham, UK

What do you mean "forcing a teenager who *will* otherwise end up long-term unemployed..."? How do you know? Clairvoyant or something?

What about five-year-olds climbing chimneys? In the nineteenth century, nearly all parents sent their children to school *unless* they needed the child's wages to put food on the table. Parents were not fools. They knew that education was the royal road out of the mill or the pit.

From the progressive point of view the beauty of compulsory education is that it provides the opening for the welfare state. After all, if you deprive the family of the child's wages then you have to provide benefits to put the food back on the table. And on and on.

And why stop the force and compulsion at age 18? Why not go the whole hog and bind 19 year-olds to a job on pain of fine and imprisonment? Or 25 year-olds? Hey, why not everyone! What's a little compulsion among friends?

Christopher Chantrill, Seattle, USA